~ in the world and in my mind

Unabashedly floral

In the midst of all the national political swirling, I’ve been engaged with flowers. An imminently satisfying activity — flowers don’t talk back! Last week I was part of the Lan Su Gardens Autumn Moon celebration and this week I was back doing a floral demonstration. All of this flower activity prompted me to finally get a flower-centric website up and running (you can visit it at Rooms In Bloom).

For me and I think for most people, flowers bring a ray of beauty and joy into our lives. Right now my house is full of flowers since I had leftover pieces and bouquets from my demo. The mums have been around for awhile, but luckily they are long lived flowers and I can look forward to having at least a few more days of inside color.

My garden on the other hand, is looking peaked. Although we haven’t had a frost, the rains have battered pretty much everything down int the mud. I used some of my garden plants in my demo, a few of which were a bit tattered. I would only use that kind of material in my own home arrangements although I did encourage people to get out into their yards and neighborhoods and find plant and flower material to use that they may have not previously considered. And to look at those things in a different way. One audience member afterward told me she had not considered using skimmia (a type of shrub) and was delighted to see my use of the leaves and tiny flowers in a bouquet.

it was fun to talk about color and design. I even wore a suitably colorful outfit that my arrangements coincidentally echoed. (BTW the skirt is a repurposed dress — a dress I owned in college! I couldn’t bear to get rid of it but no longer liked the fit so I turned it into a skirt.)

In action

Another look at the outfit

One of the arrangements

And another

I tagged this post as “creativity” and pushing boundaries. Although I’m doing more and more “creative” acts these days in several arenas, I’ve not always felt or believed that I could own these really as my own, as my own identity. Two years ago I wrote a novel as part of NaNoWriMo but haven’t done anything with it since. I write (or try to write) something every day, especially poetry, but haven’t done anything much with that either. Am I a dabbler? Or just someone who finds inspiration in a number of ways and that inspiration translates to a number of milieus? Pushing boundaries really is about pushing my own boundaries and insecurities about myself as an artist, as a creative person. Even at my somewhat advanced age I am still working on accepting who I am and that who includes being an artist manifest in choreography, writing, and floral arts.

Some days, and this is one of them, I know I better get to work on the action not stew about the definition. Yesterday I practiced creativity in flowers. An ephemeral art if there ever was one. Today I’ve got words to grapple with. Let’s see where they take me.